Winter Wonderland Clairity Click-it: Nonprofit Links, Free Resources
The survey results are in!
By overwhelming popular demand, nothing about the Clairity Click-it will change. Thanks to all who weighed in. Your input is invaluable. And you are the best! Interestingly, the results are almost identical to last year’s survey. Here’s what you told me:
Is the current amount of content too much, not enough, or just right?
Which type of content is your favorite?
Thanks for letting me know your preferences!
And I truly appreciate all the kind words and encouragement.
There are LOTS more free resources below. Once again, I want to thank my sponsor, Bloomerang, for making it possible to offer this to you for free.
To your success,
P.S. It’s been another challenging week. I take great comfort in being among a community of people like you who are doing tremendously important work. You make our world a better place.
Clairity Click-it, Your Nonprofit Ticket to…
Annual Giving
Click-it: 3 things that seem like magic in fundraising — but aren’t. Jeff Brooks, Future Fundraising Now, says these aren’t magic. I’ve found they actually are! So simple, yet so effective. Yet it’s confounding how many nonprofits don’t get any of these three right! This year, commit to focusing on magic. If you did nothing else, you’d be ahead of the game.
Board
Click-it: 5 Fun Ways Your Board Members Can Get Acquainted and Why it Matters. Board members are people first. And… people who need people are the luckiest. What are you doing to bring the luck to your board? Cindi Phallen has some great ideas in this article from the Create Possibility blog.
Capital Campaigns
Click-it: 3 Trends in Capital Campaign Fundraising. Sea changes in the way we communicate effect just about everything we do — including the way nonprofits run capital campaigns. In this article BY Andrea Kihlstedt, Capital Campaign Masters learn about three ways technology has changed campaigns. You’ll get some easy but powerful tips on how to make the most of them.
Donor Retention
Click-it: Truth Hurts: You Need to Text Your Donors. Donor Relations Guru Lynn Wester challenges you to text more of your donors. And she suggests a cool platform called Textology where you can text donors both individually and en masse right from your email inbox. That way, everything can be easily recorded in your database or CRM. Check it out!
Online Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: How to Get More People to Open Your Nonprofit Email. What are you doing to arouse curiosity? To make your email recipient stop a moment in their tracks? To keep them from going into instant delete mode? Get some ideas from my article on the Bloomerang blog.
Click-it: 6 email marketing tips to boost your nonprofit. Want to give your next email marketing campaign a big boost? 4aGoodCause invited expert Ash Salleh to offer up some useful tips and strategies – all with some great example emails from other nonprofits! This should really get your juices flowing.
Click-it: How to Choose the Right Platform for Social Media at End of Year. This is a timely, practical and quick read from the Nonprofit Marketing Blog. You don’t have to be everywhere. You do want to be in the right places. For you.
Strategy and Management
Click-it: Developing the mission of your communications team. Every time you send a message, throw an event, create an ad and do anything else to communicate your organization’s raison d’etre, you must be able to answer the question: “Why are we doing this?” The correct answer is not: “Because my boss told me to.” Here’s a great mission statement in this article from Big Duck: “to explode our base of support and make those people love us.” Read this to develop a mission statement for your department.
Click-it: How to fundraise with only volunteers. I love this article from Mary Cahalane, Hands-On Fundraising. This advice works not only for 100% volunteer-led organizations but also for small to medium-sized shops. It’s just good, basic strategy laid out in a simple, non-threatening way.
Website
Click-it: How to rewrite your website in one week. Okay, maybe not your whole website. But this practical and meaty article from Kristi Porter on the Candid blog shows you a technique to, at a minimum, rewrite your most visible content — which will make a big difference for both new and returning visitors. You do know your website is your ‘digital doorstep,’ right? It either welcomes folks to enter, or it does the opposite.
Click-it: Website Fundraising Ideas: 9 Ways to Promote Fundraising Campaigns. You’re kicking off a fundraising campaign, but will your website visitors know about it? Grab some practical ideas to assure your website anchors and supports your campaign from this post on the Qgiv blog.
FREE AUDIO-VISUAL LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES
The more you learn, the more you grow.
Finding webinars you’d like to attend that overlap? Note that for many of these webinars you can obtain a copy of the recording if you’re unable to join live – as long as you register!
Giving Tuesday
Click-it: Boost Your Giving Tuesday Revenue Using Content Marketing [Register for free webinar, 11-14-2019]. Join NextAfter to learn how to make your donation appeal stand out among the clutter. See how you can use a content-first strategy to set yourself apart and help your potential donor experience the values your organization enacts.
Online Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: Online Fundraising Performance: Does Your Nonprofit Measure Up? [Register for on-demand video]. Jay Wilkinson of Firespring always offers meaty webinars, so you’ll want to listen in on this one before you launch your year-end series of appeals. You’ll learn the attributes of a killer email campaign; how to improve donor retention; 7 steps to online fundraising success and 5 metrics to measure your performance.
Click-it: Email Subject Lines: 5 Ways to Get More Opens and Donations [Listen to free video]. You won’t see the results you want if you can’t get people to open your emails. See what the team at NextAfter has to say on this subject, based on their own research.
Strategy and Management
Click-it: The Cost of Fundraiser Turnover [Register for free webinar, 10-31-2019]. Market Smart hosts two great presenters: Mary Cahalane of Hands-On Fundraising and Zach Shefska of The Fundraising Report Card. They’ll dig into a recent study’s findings revealing a majority of fundraisers plan to leave their jobs in the next two years. This costs your organization more than you think! They’ll discuss the true cost of fundraiser turnover, and explore ways your organization can “buck the trend,” and retain frontline fundraisers.
Click-it: It’s Time to Stop Using This Word [Listen/watch free, brief video]. Could not agree more with Joan Gary of Because Nonprofits are Messy. Nonprofits use this word too much, both internally between departments and externally among like-minded organizations. Want to make fundraising a kinder, gentler pursuit? Read/listen here. And stop fighting.
FREE DOWNLOADABLE MATERIALS
Annual Giving
Click-it: The Nonprofit Recurring Giving Benchmark. Did you know recurring donors can be up to 4x more valuable than a one-time donor? The best way to understand how to optimize recurring giving is to look at it from the donor’s perspective. That’s why NextAfter became mystery donors and made recurring donations to 115 organizations. They then assessed landing pages, emails, letters, phone calls and other follow-up. The report offers tips to acquire recurring donors, mistakes to avoid in your communications, ideas to increase the value of recurring donations, and strategies to grow cultivation practices.
Content Marketing
Click-it: The Data-Backed Guide to Nonprofit Marketing [Download free e-Guide]. Grab this newly released guide from Campaign Monitor and Qgiv. They went straight to the source to discover the data-backed evidence you need to find out the truth behind what works in nonprofit marketing and why. They surveyed 1000 donors and 500 nonprofits to find out what works best to retain donors and reconnect with lapsed ones. You’ll also learn which channels and platforms yield the best results. What are you waiting for?!
Donor Retention
Click-it: Nonprofit Impact Measurement [Download free e-Guide]. One of the most effective ways to retain donors is to report back on the impact of their giving. With fierce competition for funding, nonprofits are facing ever-increasing pressure to quantify and demonstrate effectiveness and impact. The ability to measure how well your nonprofit is delivering on its mission is critical to improving your outcomes and reporting on your success. This Salesforce e-book offers tips to implement your own impact strategy.
Giving Tuesday
Click-it: 16 Email Templates for Giving Tuesday through Year-End [Download for free]. Classy is offering email templates to steward your Giving Tuesday donors and grow your year-end campaign. You’ll also get a timeline, learn how to segment your donors and get design, formatting and call-to-action tips.
Legacy Giving
Click-it: Ask Them for Their Memories, Not Their Money [Download free Infographic]. You know the power of storytelling, right? Stories don’t have to come from you! This infographic from the folks at Stelter shares ten ways to open a conversation by listening. By enjoying story time first, you can make a more educated, meaningful ask. Post this on your bulletin board or next to your computer!
Online Fundraising and Marketing
Click-it: Experiences Matter: Digital Trends for Nonprofit Marketers [Download free white paper]. It’s no secret today’s customers need engaging, personal experiences to capture their attention. And they have high expectations! Nonprofits face the same competition to deliver a great customer experience as everyone else out there. The online experts at Merkle examined emerging digital trends relating to the nonprofit sector. Here they offer concrete recommendations for how to harness data, identity, creativity, and technology to deliver the relevant experiences that meet the expectations of today’s donors and constituents.
Year End
Click-it: Year-End Tool Kit [Download free e-Guide]. From a Giving Tuesday checklist to year-end appeal templates to storytelling how-to webinars, this toolkit from Network for Good is your one-stop shop to plan a year-end fundraising campaign that will inspire donors to give big.
Did You Miss My Recent Articles?
Here are links to the most recent articles on the Clairification blog:
- Not all Holiday Fundraising is Created Equal
- How to Cultivate Awe, Gratitude and Altruism to Boost Nonprofit Fundraising
- Your Secret to Mindblowing Fundraising – Improve Donor Retention Just 10%
- 5 Ways Mobile Bidding Can Help You Raise More Revenue
- Why Donor Wooing Requires WOWing
Please support my extraordinary sponsors (see below). The Clairity Click-it content is free, and Clairification School is affordable because of their generosity.
Hope to see you in Clairification School!
Remember my motto: If I know it, I want you to know it!
1 Comment
Great roundup. thank you!